Bakla

In the Philippines, a baklâ (Tagalog and Central Bikol, pronounced [bɐkˈlaʔ]), bading (Tagalog and Central Bikol), bayot (Cebuano), or agî (Hiligaynon) is a person who was assigned male at birth and has adopted a gender expression that is feminine. They are often considered as a third gender. Many bakla are exclusively attracted to men and some identify as women. The polar opposite of the term in Philippine culture is tomboy (natively the lakin-on or binalaki), which refers to women with a masculine gender expression (usually, but not always, lesbian). The term is commonly incorrectly applied to trans women.

Bakla are socially and economically integrated into Filipino society, having been accepted by society prior to Western colonization, many of which were held in high regard and performed the role of spiritual leaders known as babaylan, katalonan, and other shamans in the indigenous Philippine folk religions. In modern times, a minority group of Filipinos disapprove or reject the baklas, usually on religious grounds allegedly from Christian or Muslim beliefs. The stereotype of a baklâ is a parlorista—a flamboyant, camp cross-dresser who works in a beauty salon; in reality, the bakla thrives in numerous sectors of society, from the lower to the upper levels.

In modern Filipino, the term "baklâ" is usually used to mean either "effeminate man" or "homosexual". Martin F. Manalansan, a Filipino anthropologist, has identified two possible origins of the term. One is that it may have been a portmanteau of the words babae ("woman"), and lalaki, meaning ("man"). The other is that it is derived from the word for the pre-colonial shamaness in most Filipino ethnic groups, the babaylan.

However, the word itself has been used for centuries, albeit in different contexts. In Old Tagalog, bacla meant "uncertainty" or "indecisiveness". Effeminate homosexual men were instead called binabaé ("like a woman") or bayogin (also spelled bayugin or bayoguin, "infertile"), during the Spanish colonial period.

The Tagalog poet Francisco Balagtas used the word bacla in reference to "a temporary lack of resolve", as seen in his popular works Florante at Laura and Orosman at Zafira. This archaic usage is also seen in the 17th-century Tagalog religious epic Casaysayan nang Pasiong Mahal ni Jesucristong Panginoon Natin na Sucat Ipag-alab nang Puso nang Sinomang Babasa ("Story of the Passion of Jesus Christ Our Lord that Surely Shall Ignite the Heart of Whosoever Readeth"), which is chanted during Holy Week. The passage narrating the Agony in the Garden has a verse that reads "Si Cristo'y nabacla" ("Christ was confused").

By the advent of World War II, the term baklâ had evolved to mean "fearful" or "weakened" in Tagalog, and became a derogatory term for effeminate men. A common euphemism for baklâ during this period was pusong babae (literally "female-hearted"). It was not until the 1990s when more positive discourse on queer and gay identities became more mainstream that baklâ lost its original derogatory connotation.

Other native terms for bakla also exist in other languages of the Philippines, some of them now considered archaic. They are also called bayot, binabáye, bayen-on (or babayen-on), or dalopapa in Cebuano; agî in Hiligaynon/Ilonggo; dampog or bayot in Waray; bantut or binabae in Tausug; bantut or dnda-dnda in Sinama; and labia in Subanen.

In addition, there are numerous modern neologisms for bakla, especially within swardspeak, with varying levels of acceptance. These include terms like badáf, badíng, beki, judíng, shokì, shoklâ, sward, and vaklúsh, among many others.